Mission for Quiet Quicksilver

I have a beloved G4 Quicksilver 800. I'm pretty sure it's the 2002. This is one of my favorite machines ever, but it's driving me crazy because it's gotten so loud in it's old age. A few years ago I researched and found out the noise is caused by poor design of the fan hood. One solution recommended was to put a piece of electrical tape over an opening in the hood. This made somewhat of an improvement but it didn't last. Now the thing is noisier than ever and I can't stand the sound it makes. It varries in vibrations. I have opened up the case and can press on areas where it seems to make a difference. I know something is loose in there but not exactly sure what. I have plans to take it apart soon to install a new DVD burner in it so I might see if there are any screws I can tighten. This used to be mine but now it's my Husband's and he uses it lightly for work.

Has anyone been down the road I'm about to go down? If so, do you have any advice? Any kinds of new fan improvements out there? This beautiful machine can still be upgraded and it's worth some TLC if only I can just make it a bit more quiet!

Replies to This Discussion

Hm. My 733 is a horror, too (although it is neither a Quicksilver nor as fast as yours).
The best solution of this and related problems found a PC-user I know (yes, some will never learn...):
He prolonged all the cables and took the computer out of the room (no foolin').Only problem: changing disks, since a Mac never crashes (that's what we tell them, hu?).
I often considered the idea of using a lot of little fans instead of The Big One,
didn't find a start to do so yet.

Did you ever figure out how to make your QS run quiet? if not, mine does run quiet, but I removed the case fan when I got it and cleaned it, but, you can find aftermarket fans the same size that are cheep and are suppose to run quiet, I also removed my cpu heat sink and fan, I cleaned the heat sink and the fan/ fan shroud (this fan size can also be found in computer stores and run quiet), so, after cleaning up my QS 733 (upgrading to 933) it does run quiet, but when the room gets warm during a heat wave, the second fun runs harder and a little louder.

I had a power mac MD and a Graphite model that were noisy after a period of time.

Forgetting the issues that Apple were paying little attention to these sorts of problems when they designed these computers. I found that giving the computer a good clean out of dust helped.

On mm MD computer I went further and replaced the fans with quieter ones in the power supply and I also re seated the heat sink with good quality gold thermal compound and it made the computer much quieter.